Girls escape house blaze

A Newport Beach teenager may have saved her friend’s life early

Thursday when she awoke to see flames shooting from a wooden dresser

adjacent to the bed where the girls were sleeping.

By the time Sandra Wilkinson, 17, woke her sleeping friend, Jackie

Kesterson, also 17, Kesterton had second-degree burns on her arm.

The two tried unsuccessfully to put out the fire with blankets and

water. The girls and Kesterson’s grandmother, Susan Hughes, then

escaped the burning home.

Kesterson was hospitalized with the burns to her arm, Wilkinson

said. According to Newport Beach Fire Department officials, no one

else was hurt.

The fire department is still investigating the cause of the blaze,

which resulted in $150,000 in damage to the Corona del Mar home in

the 2000 block of Yacht Mischief, where Kesterson lives with her

grandparents.

Standing outside the still-smoldering home, in bare feet and

wearing pajamas, Wilkinson held tightly to a cell phone, the only

item she managed to grab before fleeing the fire.

Kesterson was able to take her computer, but the girls, both

students at Orange Coast Middle College, had left plenty of important

belongings behind.

“We have so many pictures, and everything from senior year, “

Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson, who had spent the night at Kesterson’s house, didn’t

know what made her wake up in time to get herself and her friend out

of the room safely before the flames spread. “I woke her up and her

arm was all burned,” Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson reported seeing the fire shooting from underneath the

wooden dresser. She said the fire might have been sparked by a power

strip underneath the dresser.

“The whole dresser went up; her bed was on fire, then the whole

rest of the room,” Wilkinson said.

The fire progressed quickly. The girls went outside to get a hose

to extinguish the fire, and by the time they returned, black smoke

was pouring from the door, Wilkinson said.

Responding fire crews could see the plume of smoke from several

miles away, said fire department spokeswoman Jennifer Schulz.

“It was a pretty involved fire,” Schulz said.

By the time firefighters arrived, “medium to heavy” smoke was seen

coming from all sides of the home -- “every window, every chimney,

everywhere it could come from,” Schulz said.

Ambu Saprav, who lives next door, said firefighters evacuated her

before she knew the neighbor’s house was on fire.

This is the third house fire to occur in the neighborhood within a

year.

A family of four escaped a house fire that killed their pet in the

2000 block of Yacht Vindex in July. Investigators believe that fire

was started by cigarettes or ashes in a trashcan in a bedroom.

The fire caused $300,000 in damage and left the house red-tagged

with severe roof damage.

In March, no one was injured when a home on Yacht Grayling caught

fire. Firefighters believe a fire in the fireplace sparked a blaze in

the attic.

“Too many fires in this neighborhood,” Saprav said.

The three fires are unrelated, Schulz said.